Category: Music and Musicians

It seems timely to remind all about the relationship between music and leisure. Aristotle does so famously in his Politics which discusses the public and the practical life. The characteristics of this life are its business and urgency. It is a life in which deadlines demand decisive actions and emergencies call for urgent attention. The life of business and politics is driven by the unrelenting pressures of competition, survival and achievement. This life knows no leisure.
The politician busily endeavours to organise the affairs of the polis. Urgent demands for response and action make it unlikely that real reflection enters into any of her decisions. Her mandate requires constant attention to her stakeholders whose interests are pushing her into closure and decision making. Her fate depends on her public standing and on overcoming her detractors. This requires constant attention, at times desperate vigilance. Responding to the pressures of the moment her decisions are likely to be flawed, her thoughts are likely to be confused and her actions are likely to be incoherent.
The trader in the marketplace hurries from opportunity to opportunity. She must incessantly praise her wares, entice her customers or flog her products. Faced with a choice between truth and market- share, she will choose the latter and neglect the former. Any decline of activity and business, of achievement or attention implies in fact a decay of her mode of being. A trader cannot afford to slow her advance. A loss of urgency and business brings a loss of the invented self. The consequences are potentially catastrophic as the groundlessness of this fictional activity is exposed. The trader or politician who defines herself through her active and public life thus lives in constant demand to prove herself and in constant fear to lose herself. She is fundamentally unfree. She is addicted to publicity and gossip. She experiences neither happiness nor “felicity of life”. These – as Aristotle tells us- “are not possessed by the busy but by the leisured: for the busy man busies himself for the sake of some end as not being in his possession, but happiness is an end achieved, which all men think is accompanied by pleasure and not by pain.” (Politics 1338a)
What about music and the musician though? What are the potential characteristics of his activity and art? Aristotle offers one general answer and three detailed possibilities which we must carefully consider: Music is in the first instance a self-sufficient activity and hence a reflection of human freedom and autonomy. It is an activity of leisure, an activity which calls on our capacity for reflection, for listening, for calmness and relaxation and for the acceptance of the present in its presence. Music does not primarily crave public success. It invites human participation. It leads an autonomous existence of creative possibility and freedom. This explains Aristotle’s warning against becoming a professional musician. While professionals will “necessarily perform better than those who practice only long enough to learn” (Politics 1339a) the professional performance of music contains dangers of introducing business, urgency and confusion into this art of leisure. “We may consider” he writes “the conception that we have about the Gods: Zeus does not sing and harp the poets himself. But professional musicians we speak of as vulgar people, and indeed we think it not manly to perform music, except when drunk or for fun.” (1339b).
Aristotle’s point about the barbarity of the professional musician is familiar to us. In fact it is an echo of his insistence in the Nicomachean Ethics that the superior life is the contemplative life, the bios theoretikos. The busy life among practical tasks and acquired things commits to results, to public achievement, to applause and acclaim. It delivers us into a form of slavery. It transforms us in extreme cases into barbarians, into hunters of media fame, into warriors for market dominance and into killers of time. But music rejects haste, urgency and business. It is itself temporal form and it grants us time.
The rejection of urgency and business is by no means a rejection of all activity, though. Aristotle makes it quite clear that only an active life has the potential for happiness. However, the active life needs to be pursued within self-sufficient activity whose ends must not to be confused with spectacular achievements, accumulation of matter or public acclaim. An important passage in the Politics points out that the “active life is not necessarily active in relation to other men, as some people think, nor are only those processes of thought active that are pursued for the sake of the objects that result from action, but far more those speculations and thoughts that have their end in themselves and are pursued for their own sake; for the end is to do well.” (1325b)
This definition of an activity as aiming for “well-doing” (eupraxia) is highly relevant to the musician. It grounds the relationship between music and leisure. Music and music making exist as “energeia” – as actuality. In other words they have their ends in themselves and not in the products of their making. This, however, means that music is not driven by an intention to make a product with attributes that exist outside the activity of production. Music is thus not driven at all. It is leisured – it lets itself- and those who make it- be.
When considering music further, Aristotle identifies three possibilities through which we can identify the leisure of music: Firstly, music may be a form of relaxation (anapausis) which grants us relief from the relentlessness of the every-day. In this sense we engage with music “as one indulges in sleep or deep drinking” (1338b). Secondly, music may be a form of education. After all, it influences our being, forms our character and sounds out our mood creating an attunement to the world. In this way music may accustom us “to be able to rejoice rightly”. (1339a). Thirdly, music may be a form of cultural or “intellectual entertainment” (diagoge), a sophisticated form of cultured leisure. All three possibilities are according to Aristotle relevant to music – it is “reasonable to reckon it under all of these heads”. Their common theme, however, is the self-sufficient activity which identifies music as leisured. Education, relaxation and cultured entertainment all deny the pragmatic urgency of the every-day. Their excellence resides in themselves. They present us thus with the possibility of freedom.
There is a danger that such reflections on music and leisure are perceived as removed, abstract and perhaps irrelevant. However, this is a superficial impression. In fact these thoughts have very real correlations in concrete life. Musicians know that the aim of their performance cannot be – whatever the appearance- the attainment of acclaim and applause. Playing to the gallery will not enable them to be at their best. The aim of music making must be the achievement of “doing well” itself (eupraxia). This attitude aims at potential and achieves the crucial convergence between possibility and actuality.
Musical performance is thus concretely determined by leisure and by the capacity to conceive and work with leisured states of mind, body and spirit. This can be clearly seen when attending performances by highly accomplished virtuosi: their playing is always distinguished by ease, by freedom and by leisure. Their artistry is a combination of intuition, timed intensity and insight within a self-sufficient discipline. Even the most difficult work becomes seemingly effortless in the hand of a master. The virtue of a virtuoso in fact lies in the capacity to distinguish between the heightened intensity of music and the urgent energies which qualify business and politics. Unlike the urgency of noise, the timing of virtuosity is natural and self-sufficient. Unlike the busy trader or fervent politician the musician does not react to deadlines, emergencies or critical situations. The strength of his connection with leisure always includes any concrete realities of playing. He remains self-sufficient in the present, directing this playing into the future. Music as leisure cannot be otherwise. It closes the gap between possibility and actuality.

Tyrannical attitudes and titanic aspirations are not uncommon among musicians. Naïve patrons might believe that such characteristics necessarily accompany a strong, creative personality. Further still, some believe that these are only downsides of focused energy and creative determination and should in fact be nourished especially among public performers. A musician, so that view goes, who seeks to be successful must form single-minded desires, must crave spectacular fame and must pursue recognition relentlessly. She must nurture her powerful passions with extreme aesthetic or subjective convictions in the interest of music, in the pursuit of musical exposure and even regardless of the impact on others.
It is striking to note that Plato seems to suggest that a ruthless and extreme character of this kind may not even be a true musician. Book IX of the Republic contains a lengthy discussion about the nature and evolution of the tyrannical disposition. This discussion between Socrates, Glaucon and Adeimantus concludes with the suggestion by Socrates that the wise man “will always be found attuning the harmonies in his body for the sake of the concord in his soul.” Glaucon agrees with this conclusion. “By all means”, he replies, “if he is to be a true musician.” (Jowett translates: “If true music is found in him…”)
What is the feature of a tyrannical disposition? How does it come about? According to Plato everyone is potentially subject to a “terrible, fierce and lawless brood of desires”. The question is whether we allow these to determine our character and to form our existence and our habits without reflection or restraint. Plato suggests that a lack of proper education allows tyrannical habits to form. Absence of rigorous formation leads to unbalanced personal characteristics, pathological states of desires and amplified ruling passions. The tyrannical person develops because she is unable to resist the “indwelling tyrant Eros” and forms corresponding tyrannical habits and patterns of behaviour.
In circumstances of a pervasive liberal or democratic education – so Plato- a tyrannical disposition may in fact overwhelm and corrupt selected possibilities of the individual. This corruption progresses in a parasitic way: Unrestrained instincts capture desires which are found initially in a balanced context. These are converted into self-serving, self-sufficient subjective values and narcissistic aims. The tyrannical disposition operates entirely in the realm of appearance: assuming a “pomp and circumstance” it dissolves a functional harmony by amplifying single voices from a concordance of psychic forces. It suppresses the sound of legitimate desires. It denies without shame and without conscience any requirements for rational attunement or justification. In its relations with others, it seeks to establish power by forming associations of advantage and corruption and by nourishing its position through flattery and fear.
Plato’s understanding of the soul is relevant here. According to Republic IX the soul is driven by three “appetites and controls”: love of learning or wisdom, love of honour or victory and love of gain or money. The meaning and the validity of some of these values, however, is derivative. Honour and gain must be validated by reason. Rooted in appearance, the objects they seek are not necessarily able to fill the soul with meaningful or even pleasurable content. Such content can only be established if the will to power is committed to learning, understanding and wisdom. Without this grounding, the desires for honour and gain become tyrannical and the person becomes essentially unhappy, her soul devoid of meaningful pleasure.
How does this relate to the true musician? The brief comment in the Republic makes the suggestion that the true musician is in fact the person who is able to harmonise and attune the forces of her soul and character. This attunement takes place in relation to the love of learning or wisdom. In this sense the musician achieves the same as the philosopher: he listens to logos. That point seems to be further elaborated in the dialogue Laches where Plato defines as musical a person of particular disposition: “I take the speaker and his speech together, and observe how they sort and harmonize with each other. Such a man is exactly what I understand by ‘musical’- he has tuned himself with the fairest harmony, not that of a lyre or other entertaining instrument, but has made a true concord of his own life between his words and his deeds, not in the Ionian, no, nor in the Phrygian nor in the Lydian, but simply in the Dorian mode, which is the sole Hellenic harmony. Such a man makes me rejoice with his utterance, and anyone would judge me then a lover of a discussion, so eagerly do I take in what he says” (Laches, 188d).
According to this understanding what we say and what we do, the word and the deed are not automatically or accidentally aligned. They require an active will to harmony. Such a will must seek the guidance of reason. It accepts the priority of thinking and reflection in a search for understanding. This still implies an intuitive step in which we listen to- and hear the voice of reason. Such an attention allows the true musician to breach the abyss that naturally separates our reflections from our actions. He can do so with ease and confidence and on the basis of a will to harmony of action and reflection within his soul. If, however, this will and the love of learning are overwhelmed by a will to power, by amplified desires for gain and victory, the musician ceases to be true to himself. She turns into a tyrannical person finding herself constantly in the realm of action and at odds with human essence. The symptoms of such fundamental dissonance are an incessant flight and a pervasive fear. Plato’s point thus seems to be that amplifying a will to power in tyranny silences music while denying a will to harmony in ignorance corrupts the musician.

Kierkegaard’s reflections on Don Giovanni (found in his book “Either/Or”) must concern us musicians: They identify music as the art of the “immediately, sensuously-erotic” and suggest that music is authentically devoid of reflective attributes. Transient temporality is affirmed as a fundamental determination of music. The pursuit of sensuality, an incessant desire for conquest and change and an absence of reflection and conscience all characterise Don Giovanni. This makes Don Giovanni for Kierkegaard essentially musical.
When confronted with this phenomenon an ordinary, bourgeois consciousness naturally thinks of moral disapproval. However, a moral judgment is strictly speaking not applicable here. Don Giovanni simply fulfills the conditions of an existence that is absolutely committed to continuous transience. The absence of a temporal consciousness excludes the moral perspective. An ethical state of existence only emerges where we find endurance and a conscious conception of presence, a temporal horizon. Only a consciousness of endurance and presence confronts us with responsibility. Don Giovanni’s transient being, his restless immersion in becoming, dissolves such a context and accordingly severs his attachment to responsibility. He remains unaccountable since he lives absolutely in the here-and-now.
An absolute commitment to transience and intoxication excludes Don Giovanni also from any form of communal justice. To be sure, a metaphysical form of justice catches up with Don Giovanni in the end. But this amounts to an affirmation of being versus becoming: The cold stone statue of the Commendatore becomes the hero’s undoing. Don Giovanni is presented with the consequence of his incessant becoming, with his own nemesis. But Don Giovanni is never brought to worldly justice or to moral account. He simply comes undone as his existence leads to an inevitable conclusion inherent in the original denial of being. The absolute affirmation of becoming (with its implicit denial of being) collides with a transcendent truth of being. The point is that an hermetic, absolute isolation of the aesthetic perspective cannot be maintained. It will meet – and fail in the challenge of enduring being.
For us musicians this seems to contain an important message: If Kierkegaard is right in identifying the aesthetic state of being as essentially musical, an absolute affirmation of music as a mode of aesthetic existence, of a relentless becoming, of incessant change and turbulent chaos, will loose its bearings. Musicians who deny being and relentlessly affirm becoming come undone. This occurs notwithstanding the fact that the essential nature of music is becoming and change or – in Nietzsche’s characterisation – the “Dionysian”. However, is music absolutely “aesthetic” or (with Kierkegaard) an expression of the immediately, sensuously-erotic? It does not seem so since music is also and perhaps foremost a spiritual art. A conception of music as a spiritual art commits us to conscious listening. Conscious listening is always reflective, however. It creates, discovers and commits to meaning within a flow of otherwise ever-changing impressions. In fact, the very possibility of musical perception requires the presence of consciousness. Reflection and consciousness enable the listener to recognise the signal as a musical symbol, to distinguish noise from music. At this point of recognition, however, the aesthetic perspective is transcended and forms of presence, of permanence and of endurance are introduced. Identities are established and with them the requirements of responsibility. It seems that this is the point of Don Giovanni as an opera. It is not the point of Don Giovanni as the character, though, who is a nihilistic phenomenon: a denier of the truth of being.
Musicians must take care not to confuse character and play: While grounded in becoming and in the sensuously-erotic, music is also sustained by being and mediated, reflective consciousness. In fact music forms a bridge between the aesthetic and the ethical state of being. This makes it highly significant. It makes it also subject to the tensions emanating powerfully from both force-fields at all times.